Hope for end to US-China trade troubles

The two countries could be nearer to ending their six-month tariff dispute

China and the United States could be inching closer to calling off their trade feud, some analysts in both countries believe.

President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump both spoke positively of their phone conversation, during which they hoped an agreement beneficial to both nations and the world could be reached.

The US has imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese exports since July, and China retaliated by levying new tariffs on $110 billion of US exports. The tit-for-tat tariffs have triggered grave concern of an all-out trade war between the world's two largest economies.

Xi and Trump, when meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires on Dec 1, agreed to refrain from imposing new tariffs, a move described by some as a 90-day truce.

"President Trump's upbeat assessment of this most recent conversation with President Xi gives rise to the hope that bilateral trade tensions soon will be ratcheted down significantly," said Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, referring to Trump's upbeat tweet after the phone talk with Xi.

Lardy believes that the way out is for each side to compromise, but he said it won't be easy, due to domestic reasons in both countries.